SIMPLY MARVELOUS

ST. PETERSBURG - You know a disc jockey is special when you listen through the commercials to get to his next funny line or keen observation. Or just to hear that familiar, comforting voice as it introduces the next song.

You don't hit the button for another station when your favorite DJ is on the air.

For me, that DJ is 'Marvelous' Marvin Boone, who is equal parts comedian, friend and rock 'n' roll historian to his listeners at WRBQ, 104.7 FM. Boone, 51, has been at the station since May 2000.

His deep, measured bass is always under control. He's soothing, yet lively in tone.

He definitely has the voice, but what sets him apart are his ears.

'My favorite thing about this job is the calls I get,' says Marvelous Marvin, as he is known to his listeners, between songs at the station. 'Most people have the callers screened, but I take them all. And I let them talk.'

There was the lady in chemo treatment who called in and cried after he made a comment that touched her. And the 'Crazy Lady,' who regularly calls to rant. Then there's Joey, who calls a couple of times each week from the bus stop to hear 'Love Train' by the O'Jays and dances when it plays.

Somehow they all connect into a radio family from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. every day except Saturday. The 'Bouffant Buffet,' an all-requests-and-dedications hour from noon to 1 p.m., is when Marvelous Marvin is totally in his element.

'I like the guys who call to request a song and forget why they called or what song they want,' he says. 'I find them entertaining, and so I put them on the air because I figure my listeners will find them entertaining.'

The studio line rings, and he punches the phone button. The caller's voice is somewhat muffled as he requests 'The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,' by Gordon Lightfoot.

'The Wreck of the Ella Fitzgerald?' asks Marvelous Marvin, and he chuckles when they wrap up the call.

Boone has been Marvelous Marvin ever since the late Scott Robbins, whom he worked with at another local radio station, dubbed him so 11 years ago. Robbins never told him why he started with the nickname, but Boone figures it's connected to former boxing champion Marvelous Marvin Hagler.

Boone's life, at least his past, sounds a lot like a country music song. In 1999, he weighed 320 pounds and was drinking and eating heavily. He lost his job and was divorced on the same day - Dec. 13, no less.

But over the next two years, he lost 120 pounds, got sober, began exercising and started eating healthfully. He got his current job and met his current wife, Pamela. Life was truly marvelous for Marvin, the son of a former TV and radio newsman from the Midwest who quit as a DJ in 1955 because he couldn't stand 'this new rock 'n' roll' music.

'I was unemployed and alone back then,' Marvin says. 'But I got centered. I prayed to stop drinking. I prayed the weight off. I learned about nutrition and exercise, and now I work out at 7:30 every morning.

'And my wife - she's cute; she's adorable. She makes my life; she's such a blessing.'

He says, 'God has had a hand in all of it.'

Boone was baptized in 2005 in the Holton River in Hiltons, Va., not far from a church and cemetery where members of the musical Carter Family, which included June Carter Cash, worshiped and were buried. The Boones, who recently celebrated their fifth anniversary, discovered the spot on a 'second honeymoon' to the Blue Ridge Mountains.

'I met my wife doing this show,' he says. She called in for an on-air contest.

'She was caller No. 7, the winner. But we had phone problems and I lost her. So, I gave the dinner to caller No. 8.'

Pamela called him back after losing out on the radio prize, and he was impressed that she was neither mad at him nor demanding anything.

She called back a week later and asked him to play her a song.

'I sent out 'Get Ready' by Rare Earth,' he says. The song's chorus begins:

I'm bringing you a love that's true

Get ready, get ready …'cause here I come.

'It turned out to be fitting,' he adds. They met and immediately hit it off.

'I had to have an emergency surgery, and for two weeks he brought me food every day,' Pamela Boone says.

'After I was OK, he walked away and said, 'It's been a pleasure helping you.' He didn't want to push himself on me. But I said, 'Aren't you coming back tomorrow?' He did, and we've been together every day since for six years.'

Burning Love

He proposed to her on one bent knee, and they were married in Las Vegas, with an Elvis tribute artist walking her down the aisle. After her father died, she dreamed that Elvis Presley would be the one walking her to her nuptials, and so Marvelous Marvin, a total Elvis fan, was only too happy to oblige.

Now a cardboard Elvis wearing leis and scarves greets visitors to the couple's south Tampa home. It's a happy bungalow where the Christmas lights never come down off the fireplace.

'With Marvin, what you see on the air is what you get,' she says. 'He's always helping people and is just a lot of fun, a real joy to be around.'

He credits Mason Dixon, the station's popular morning show personality and program director, for letting him be himself on the air. Comfortable enough to interview Olivia Newton-John and ask her, 'Have you ever been mellow?'

He can't remember the singer's answer, but she laughed. You do plenty of that if you listen to Marvelous Marvin, who once put a telemarketer from a local country station on the air and got her interested in his station's motorcycle giveaway.

It All Began With Dad

His gift of gab comes from his father, Marvin Boone Sr.

'Dad worked at WHK in Cleveland,' he says. 'He introduced me to Don Imus and some other people there who he hoped would talk me out of ever going into the business. I went to the Ohio School of Broadcasting behind his back. He was upset at first, but now he's really, really proud of me.'

After his show, Marvelous Marvin reclines in a leather lobby chair to talk. Randy Price, a country DJ who also broadcasts at the CBS facility on WQYK, 99.5 FM, passes by and exchanges greetings.

'I worked with his dad at WHK,' Price says. 'I remember little Marvin running across the street from the station to buy 45s. Who knew?'

Boone got a job after broadcasting school in 1977 at WGUL in New Port Richey, where he played big-band music and first connected with listeners on a Saturday night request show. He thrives on personal contact and still DJs parties and weddings with any type of music.

'I always picture I'm talking to one person on the air,' he says. 'And you can't fake it in radio like you can on TV or in the movies. It's a soul, a voice floating through the air, and you can't fake it.'

He remembers working in a cardboard factory, where the radio was what got them through their shift.

'I let them talk when they call,' he says of his listeners. 'They might be lonely. I had a lady whose husband died who invited me over for a hot meal and for her dead husband's shirts. A biker was killed in a biking accident in New Port Richey and asked to be buried with his bike and tapes of my shows.

'I said something on the air that was meant as a joke to my wife, who is always concerned about her hair. I said, 'You look beautiful to me without hair.' A lady who was undergoing chemo called me up and was in tears.'

He shakes his head and bows before adding, 'The listeners touch you. But I'm just a conduit. I inherited this voice, and all I have is a gift from God.'